A choice between deviants and greatness
As the world this week celebrates with Nelson Mandela his 93rd birthday, it is perhaps appropriate to look at the question of leaders and leadership in Africa, and particularly in South Africa.
In a keynote address delivered recently at a Black Management Forum (BMF) function in Richards Bay, author and academic Prince Mashele referred to Mandela and former South African President Thabo Mbeki as “two inspirational leaders” who “through their integrity and intellectual capabilities provided leadership to South Africans in a manner that made other Africans submit to their leadership”.
Yet in the same address, Mashele also touched on a raw nerve: the image of Africa as a savage continent, its countries being at the bottom of the global economic system as former World Bank economist Paul Collier unflatteringly wrote in his book The Bottom Billion.
More often than not Africa is portrayed in the Western media as a conflict and disease ridden continent led by corrupt leaders who do nothing to alleviate the suffering of its impoverished masses. Quite often, it would seem, this happens to be true. Just think of leaders such as Uganda’s Idi Amin, Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the former Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, or South Africa’s Hendrik Verwoerd (the latter not really an African, was he?).
Are these then the kind of leaders that are to be associated with Africa, or the collective African image? Certainly not. These are the deviants, just like every other continent in the world has produced its fair share of deviants. Europe gave us Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini among others. South America produced Somoza Garcia, Augusto Pinochet, Manuel Noriega and many more.
To equate African leadership with failure, repression and corruption would be to deny the global legacy of integrity, generosity, reconciliation, and reason bestowed by Mandela, or the intellectual capabilities of a Mbeki. There were many others like them, such as the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Seretse Khama in Botswana, and in South Africa the likes of Albert Luthuli, Albertina Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Desmond Tutu, Steve Biko and many more.
Like any other continent in the world, Africa has both is deviants and its greats. This brings one to South Africa and some tricky questions of leadership that are under the spotlight this week.
As a leading nation in Africa, and as the continent’s biggest economy, every move by its leaders, particularly its president, is keenly watched here and around the world. And this week its president, Jacob Zuma, will be closely watched for the kind of leadership he projects and the choices he makes.
For it is expected that Zuma must act on the damning report by the country’s Public Protector, Advocate Thuli Madonsela, who called on him to take action against his national police commissioner Bheki Cele and his public works minister Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde for their role in a leasing scandal that would have cost taxpayers a staggering R1.7bn.
Zuma is also under pressure from the public, the media, opposition parties and even his political allies like the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) to take action against corruption, including against Cele and Mhalngu-Nkabinde as well as against other allegedly corrupt politicians like Co-Operative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka, Northern Cape ANC chairman John Block and Nelson Mandela Bay ANC chairman Nceba Faku. Thus far Zuma seems to have avoided making the hard decisions, but the pressure has grown, and Madonsela’s report has presented him with an inescapable challenge.
There are two options available to him. One is presented by the inimitable Mac Maharaj, that struggle veteran, political Jack of all trades and Zuma’s newly appointed official voice. It is the same Mac who joined Mo Shaik several years ago to falsely finger Zuma’s persecutor and prosecutor, Bulelani Ngcuka, as an apartheid spy. Both have since been rewarded with cushy jobs by Zuma.
Nevertheless, Maharaj offers Zuma an out in the form of “ANC tradition”. Asked by a Sunday newspaper why Zuma, for instance, has not fired Shiceka – who irregularly squandered R300,000 in taxpayers’ money to visit his jailed drug smuggler mistress in Switzerland – Maharaj offered “ANC tradition” as the reason, saying the president’s “deep reluctance...to kick a person who is ill” comes from a common ANC tradition to care for its people, even if they find themselves on the wrong side of decency or the law it seems.
The other side of the coin is offered by another ANC colleague of Zuma’s, none other than ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe. For it was Mantashe who this past weekend joined the likes of Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi in their condemnation of corruption in the ANC and government when he presented a nine-page document to the mid-year lekgotla of the ANC’s national executive committee in which he slammed ANC leaders’ inaction on corruption.
Despite being long-time close allies, Mantashe effectively threw down the gauntlet to Zuma to stop being soft on corruption and to take action. Mantashe cited the “huge damage done to the image” of the ruling party by its leaders simply dismissing the many “high profile cases” of allegations of corruption against “our comrades”.
Which begs the question: will Zuma this week choose the Maharaj option or the Mantashe option? Will he choose for Africa’s deviants, or for its greats? Watch this space.
Meanwhile, we wish you a happy birthday Madiba. May the spirit of everything you represent and stand for continue forever to inspire our great continent and this wonderful country, and may our greats bury the deviants.
Stef Terblanche
Experienced freelance journalist, editor, content provider, copywriter, business writer and wordsmith based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Pages
▼
Notes from Africa
Two countries, two presidents and a Mac
(This column appears weekly in Leadership magazine's online bulletin.)
Tuesday 12 July 2011
By Stef Terblanche
A tale of two countries – and two presidents, mind you - has been unfolding in the far north of the African continent this week. In both cases the continent’s southernmost country, South Africa, has played and continues to play, a leading role.
This weekend South Sudan formally achieved its hard-won independence after a 22-year long bloody conflict, making it the world’s newest and Africa’s 54th state. It also ends Sudan’s reign as Africa’s largest state, a distinction that now falls to Algeria, with the Democratic Republic of Congo moving into second place.
A leading figure in achieving South Sudan’s “peaceful” transition to statehood has been former South African president Thabo Mbeki.
Meanwhile, civil war compounded by foreign intervention, continues in (northern) Sudan’s north-western neighbour, Libya. This past week saw Russia looking for a speedy end to the conflict when it engaged in discussions with NATO – whom it accuses of overstepping the UN mandate for international intervention to protect Libyan civilians – and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma.
President Zuma has made it his mission to seek an African solution for the Libyan conflict. Although his government supported the UN mandate for aerial intervention, he now says the Western allies have misinterpreted it and are abusing it. He has subsequently been hard at work trying to get the African Union’s road map for peace in Libya adopted and implemented.
But while the NATO allies are arrogantly thumbing their noses at Zuma and the AU, Russia last week importantly promised him support. China, with ever-growing vested interests in Africa, already has questioned the NATO campaign and is also likely to back Zuma and the AU.
Ironic it is that these two peace missions are being led by two South African presidents who not long ago could themselves have done with an international peace mission to resolve their own political conflict when Zuma replaced Mbeki in something just short of a palace revolt. Could it be that international conflict resolution is the new stage for their ongoing political brinkmanship?
The story of South Sudan does not end here though. Among the many issues still confronting it is the spill over impact of the conflict in the Darfur region in northern Sudan (in which South Africa is also playing a peace-seeking role); the threat to regional peace created by the growing international Nile River dispute over access to one of the region’s scarcest resources, water; the tensions between northern Sudan and South Sudan over border disputes which already led to violence; the obligation on South Sudan to share oil revenue with the north as part of their secession agreement and which could create future tensions; the possible impact of Africa’s worst drought in 60 years in the Horn of Africa region which threatens famine for 10 million people; having to deal with northern Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide; transforming South Sudan’s liberation movement into a political party that will move away from past abuses and atrocities to embracing an inclusive democratic state model; and many more.
Mbeki has played an impressive role in ending the 22-year old armed conflict here and securing a largely peaceful transition to the formation of the new state. As the leader of the AU’s High-Level Implementation Panel on Sudan, Mbeki also intervened successfully when the north recently militarily attacked the disputed border town of Abyei.
Mbeki’s passion for peace in Africa is understandable: it is a precondition for his much cherished dream of an African Renaissance.
Whether Zuma will enjoy the same success in Libya, remains to be seen. This nut may be a bit harder to crack, mainly because of the Western allies’ disingenuous interference here. One suspects it is driven by oil greed on the allies’ part and French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s rather dubious agenda (he has armed Libyan rebels in contravention of the UN mandate among other things).
However, NATO’s military intervention has been dressed up as concern for Libyan lives threatened by that mean old shade-wearing rock star dictator, Muammar Gaddafi (the furthest thing from a military colonel I’ve ever seen). It was left to Russia last week to tell the NATO allies that their cynical bombing campaign is costing as many Libyan civilian lives as Gaddafi’s forces may have taken.
One certain victim of the current Libyan conflict has been the credibility of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. While it openly admits it has yet to find evidence on which to base charges, it has already just about found Gaddafi guilty of all sorts of atrocities, lynched him publicly through the media, almost effectively condemned him to death and issued a warrant for his arrest. Shades of Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction?
Meanwhile the issue of Gaddafi’s arrest warrant is another distinction Libya shares with Sudan. It is only the second arrest warrant ever issued by the ICC for a sitting head of state – the other being for northern Sudan’s al-Bashir.
The Libyan conflict has all the makings of being part genuine civil war, part covert insurrection by dubious rebels armed and motivated by Western nations with questionable interests. With the conflict being largely between its western and eastern regions, the Sudan option may be a solution. But whether Zuma and the AU will have Mbeki’s stomach for that one is another question.
Finally, talking of Zuma brings to mind another rather quirky matter: in Africa, it seems, one can’t put a good Mac down.
There are many kinds of Macs in Africa, of course. There’s the beloved raincoat brought here by the British and that American burger Mac. And then of course there’s that other Mac, the one and only Mac Maharaj.
After a short silence following a somewhat bloodied nose in the Bulelani Ngcuka “apartheid spy” saga, the former liberation trench fighter, Robben Island prisoner, transport minister and political Jack of all trades has bounced back onto centre stage – this time as Zuma’s newly appointed spokesman.
It may be remembered that it was the inimitable Mac and Mo Shaik who falsely accused the then chief prosecutor Ngcuka of having been an apartheid spy. Of course, Ngcuka at the time was investigating Zuma for arms deal corruption.
In a maccy twist to the tale, it seems now both Mac and Mo have been handsomely rewarded by Zuma: Mo by being made Zuma’s spy chief, and Mac by becoming Zuma’s voice. Let’s hope it helps him achieve peace in Libya.
Copyright 2011 Stef Terblanche
(This column appears weekly in Leadership magazine's online bulletin.)
Tuesday 12 July 2011
By Stef Terblanche
A tale of two countries – and two presidents, mind you - has been unfolding in the far north of the African continent this week. In both cases the continent’s southernmost country, South Africa, has played and continues to play, a leading role.
This weekend South Sudan formally achieved its hard-won independence after a 22-year long bloody conflict, making it the world’s newest and Africa’s 54th state. It also ends Sudan’s reign as Africa’s largest state, a distinction that now falls to Algeria, with the Democratic Republic of Congo moving into second place.
A leading figure in achieving South Sudan’s “peaceful” transition to statehood has been former South African president Thabo Mbeki.
Meanwhile, civil war compounded by foreign intervention, continues in (northern) Sudan’s north-western neighbour, Libya. This past week saw Russia looking for a speedy end to the conflict when it engaged in discussions with NATO – whom it accuses of overstepping the UN mandate for international intervention to protect Libyan civilians – and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma.
President Zuma has made it his mission to seek an African solution for the Libyan conflict. Although his government supported the UN mandate for aerial intervention, he now says the Western allies have misinterpreted it and are abusing it. He has subsequently been hard at work trying to get the African Union’s road map for peace in Libya adopted and implemented.
But while the NATO allies are arrogantly thumbing their noses at Zuma and the AU, Russia last week importantly promised him support. China, with ever-growing vested interests in Africa, already has questioned the NATO campaign and is also likely to back Zuma and the AU.
Ironic it is that these two peace missions are being led by two South African presidents who not long ago could themselves have done with an international peace mission to resolve their own political conflict when Zuma replaced Mbeki in something just short of a palace revolt. Could it be that international conflict resolution is the new stage for their ongoing political brinkmanship?
The story of South Sudan does not end here though. Among the many issues still confronting it is the spill over impact of the conflict in the Darfur region in northern Sudan (in which South Africa is also playing a peace-seeking role); the threat to regional peace created by the growing international Nile River dispute over access to one of the region’s scarcest resources, water; the tensions between northern Sudan and South Sudan over border disputes which already led to violence; the obligation on South Sudan to share oil revenue with the north as part of their secession agreement and which could create future tensions; the possible impact of Africa’s worst drought in 60 years in the Horn of Africa region which threatens famine for 10 million people; having to deal with northern Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide; transforming South Sudan’s liberation movement into a political party that will move away from past abuses and atrocities to embracing an inclusive democratic state model; and many more.
Mbeki has played an impressive role in ending the 22-year old armed conflict here and securing a largely peaceful transition to the formation of the new state. As the leader of the AU’s High-Level Implementation Panel on Sudan, Mbeki also intervened successfully when the north recently militarily attacked the disputed border town of Abyei.
Mbeki’s passion for peace in Africa is understandable: it is a precondition for his much cherished dream of an African Renaissance.
Whether Zuma will enjoy the same success in Libya, remains to be seen. This nut may be a bit harder to crack, mainly because of the Western allies’ disingenuous interference here. One suspects it is driven by oil greed on the allies’ part and French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s rather dubious agenda (he has armed Libyan rebels in contravention of the UN mandate among other things).
However, NATO’s military intervention has been dressed up as concern for Libyan lives threatened by that mean old shade-wearing rock star dictator, Muammar Gaddafi (the furthest thing from a military colonel I’ve ever seen). It was left to Russia last week to tell the NATO allies that their cynical bombing campaign is costing as many Libyan civilian lives as Gaddafi’s forces may have taken.
One certain victim of the current Libyan conflict has been the credibility of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. While it openly admits it has yet to find evidence on which to base charges, it has already just about found Gaddafi guilty of all sorts of atrocities, lynched him publicly through the media, almost effectively condemned him to death and issued a warrant for his arrest. Shades of Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction?
Meanwhile the issue of Gaddafi’s arrest warrant is another distinction Libya shares with Sudan. It is only the second arrest warrant ever issued by the ICC for a sitting head of state – the other being for northern Sudan’s al-Bashir.
The Libyan conflict has all the makings of being part genuine civil war, part covert insurrection by dubious rebels armed and motivated by Western nations with questionable interests. With the conflict being largely between its western and eastern regions, the Sudan option may be a solution. But whether Zuma and the AU will have Mbeki’s stomach for that one is another question.
Finally, talking of Zuma brings to mind another rather quirky matter: in Africa, it seems, one can’t put a good Mac down.
There are many kinds of Macs in Africa, of course. There’s the beloved raincoat brought here by the British and that American burger Mac. And then of course there’s that other Mac, the one and only Mac Maharaj.
After a short silence following a somewhat bloodied nose in the Bulelani Ngcuka “apartheid spy” saga, the former liberation trench fighter, Robben Island prisoner, transport minister and political Jack of all trades has bounced back onto centre stage – this time as Zuma’s newly appointed spokesman.
It may be remembered that it was the inimitable Mac and Mo Shaik who falsely accused the then chief prosecutor Ngcuka of having been an apartheid spy. Of course, Ngcuka at the time was investigating Zuma for arms deal corruption.
In a maccy twist to the tale, it seems now both Mac and Mo have been handsomely rewarded by Zuma: Mo by being made Zuma’s spy chief, and Mac by becoming Zuma’s voice. Let’s hope it helps him achieve peace in Libya.
Copyright 2011 Stef Terblanche